The Tales of Sabalan, written by Mohammad Reza Bayrami in post-revolutionary Iran, is the story of a young boy who is forced to grow up quickly, to assume the role of the male head of the household at a tender age because of the untimely death of his father. It includes two short novels, "Kuh Mara Seda Zad" [The Mountain Called Me] and "Bar Labeh-ye Partgah" [On the Edge of the Precipice]. Although The Mountain Called Me was translated into German, as Djalal reitet um sein Leben, by Jutta Himmelreich (Zürich: Nagel & Kimche, 1999), and won two prestigious literary prizes in Europe, the present volume is the first English translation of Bayrami's work.

Mohammad Reza Bayrami

Mohammad Reza Bayrami was born in 1965 in northwestern Iran in a village at the foot of Sabalan Mountain, where the two stories in this collection, as well as many of his other stories, take place. He is the author of more than 30 novels and collections of short stories, which have won him many literary prizes.